Katmai was a 92-foot Seattle-based head-and-gut cod boat. In October 2008 she was fishing the western Aleutian Islands, and by the evening of October 21 she had about 120,000 pounds of frozen cod aboard as she transited Amchitka Pass toward Dutch Harbor, some 120 miles west of Adak. A hurricane-force wind warning was in effect, and two larger vessels nearby sheltered; Katmai’s master, Henry Blake III, pressed on into east winds of 60 to 70 knots and seas of 20 to 30 feet.
On the night of October 21–22 she lost steering. Her lazarette — the aft steering compartment — was found flooded, its watertight door open. The door was closed and pumping began, and the water at first fell; then water was found in the processing space, whose aft watertight door was also open, and in the engineroom, a foot or two above the deck plates. The master’s distress calls on the usual frequencies went unanswered — Kodiak recorded a mayday carrying no vessel name, position or nature of distress — and he alerted a nearby fishing vessel by e-mail. Her manually activated emergency beacon carried no GPS, and her position reached the Coast Guard only after delay. She sank about midnight.
Seven men, including the master, got into a 15-person liferaft. It capsized again and again through the night, throwing them into the sea; three of the seven were lost from it. The three men assigned to a second raft did not survive. A Coast Guard Jayhawk reached the scene the next morning after a flight of more than 1,000 miles, and at 3:28 that afternoon hoisted the four survivors — the master, deck boss Guy Shroder, and deckhands Adam Foster and Harold Appling — after some 16 hours in the raft. Seven of the 11 aboard died; two of them, chief engineer Robert Davis and Carlos Zabala, were never found.
The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the probable cause of the sinking was the loss of the vessel’s watertight integrity: watertight doors from the main deck to the processing space and the lazarette were left open while the vessel was overloaded and navigating in severe weather, allowing progressive flooding. Contributing were the master’s decision to continue fishing operations as severe weather approached rather than seek shelter, his loading of twice the amount of cargo addressed in the vessel’s stability report, and the owner’s failure to ensure the stability information was current and that the master understood it. Where the first water entered the engineroom was never established.
The Coast Guard’s Marine Board made 31 recommendations — among them position alarms for watertight doors, satellite emergency communications for fishing vessels beyond the boundary line, and consideration of training and licensing for their masters. Katmai’s master held no licence, because for a vessel under 200 tons none was required.
The brief above summarises the findings of the Coast Guard Marine Board’s full report of April 26, 2010.